Two Suicide bombers detonated explosives-rigged vehicles at an elementary school and a police station in northern Iraq, killing at least 15 people, 12 of whom were children. 14 more were killed in a suicide attack on Shi’ite pilgrims in Baghdad.

Tal Afar mayor Abdel-Aal al-Obeidi says the twin blasts hit the
nearby Shi'ite village of Qabak on Sunday morning, the start of
the local work week. Tal Afar is 420 kilometers northwest of
Baghdad, not far from the Syrian border.

A suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into the
playground of the elementary school, blowing himself up. Just
minutes earlier, a separate suicide bomber targeted a police
station.

There are conflicting report on the identity of the victims.

AFP reports that twelve children and the school's principal were
killed in the attack, which caused part of the single-story
building to collapse, possibly trapping more people inside. Two
officers were also reported killed in the attack on the police
station. Reuters, however, says that there were no fatalities in
the attack on the police station, while 14 children and their
principal died when militants targeted the school.

Al-Obeidi said at least 90 more were injured in the dual blasts.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but such
bombings are the hallmark of Sunni Islamists allied to Iraq’s
branch of Al-Qaeda. The area around the afflicted village, which
only has a population of 200, has long been a hotbed for Sunni
insurgents and a corridor for extremist fighters arriving from
nearby Syria.

Meanwhile, a separate attack targeting Shiite pilgrims passing
through a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad brought the total death
toll for Sunday to 27. Police said 14 people were killed and 23
wounded when a suicide bomber targeted the pilgrims in the
northern neighborhood of Waziriyah.

"Pools of blood, shoes and flesh are covering the
ground," a policeman at the scene of the blast in Baghdad
told Reuters. The attack came on the anniversary of the death of
a Shi'ite imam. Women and children were among the victims, the
policeman said.

Relations between Sunni and Shi’ite’s in Iraq have become
increasingly strained in recent times, in part due to the
conflict in neighboring Syria, which has attracted fighters from
both sides of the sectarian divide to engage in the broader
regional proxy war. That, coupled with internal tensions between
the two dominant denominations in Islam has led to the deadliest
wave of violence to strike Iraq in 5 years.

On Saturday, 73 people were killed in a raft of attacks
throughout the country.

Police officials told AFP that at least 49 people died when a
suicide bomber targeted Shiite pilgrims passing through the
largely Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah en route to a nearby
Shiite shrine. Seventy-five people were reported wounded in the
blast.

Other attacks across the violence-torn nation claimed 24 lives.
The deaths were confirmed by hospital officials.

Around the same time the blast targeted Shiite pilgrims, a
suicide bomber detonated himself in a café in Balad - a largely
Shiite town surrounded by Sunni communities, located about 80
kilometers north of Baghdad. The attack claimed 13 lives and left
22 wounded.

Three people were also killed and 13 were wounded in the
religiously mixed Baghdad neighborhood of Baiyaa after a hidden
bomb went off inside a café.

Two journalists were gunned down in a separate incident in Mosul,
located in the north of the country.

Iraqi forces have carried out operations against militants in
recent months but have not managed to curb the violence sweeping
the county.

News editor at Antiwar.com Jason Ditz told RT that Iraq is
possibly already in a new sectarian civil war. “We have been
seeing enormous death tolls all through the summer. And I think
the reality is that the current government does not have a
reasonable policy to respond to it…Political fractions are
unwilling to share power with anyone else. We have a lot of
hostility going back and forth.”

The violence is a problem for the whole region, argued Ditz.
“We are seeing a lot of spillover violence back and forth
with Syria…Sooner or later this will be something that would have
to be dealt with region-wide.”

More than 4,800 people have been killed in Iraq this year
according to figures published by AFP, which are based on
security and medical sources.